Abstract

A survey has been made of optical attenuation in a series of commercially available silica, SiO2, samples to determine the suitability of this material for fiber optical communications. The absorptive component of the attenuation was measured by a precision calorimetric technique, while the scattering component was determined by a new method based on spontaneous Brillouin spectroscopy. Both techniques set an upper limit on the loss and are precise to within a fraction of 1 dB/km. Of the samples tested, the best has a total attenuation of less than 3 dB/km at the 1.06‐μ wavelength of the YAlG : Nd laser.